Why did I want to join the Peace Corps?

Note: This post is for September 4, 2011.

The following was the first essay I submitted to the Peace Corps along with my application...

As a Deaf individual, I was fortunate to navigate my life choices and experience amazing personal growth and accomplishments. By being independent, resourceful, and sensitive toward others, I was able to manage various life challenges thrown at me and conquer most of them. I attended three different universities, and completed my Bachelor’s degree during evening study while raising my family. In all places of employment I have worked at, I attracted successful working groups that trust and enjoy working with each other, and as a result, produced fantastic outcomes.

During the past ten years, I served as the Director of Technology for the Indiana School for the Deaf and as a Deaf Advocate within the local Deaf Community. I have developed quite vast network of people from other Deaf schools and communities across the nation. Chairing several national-level Deaf School technology conferences, elite national-level Deaf School Prep tournaments have given me opportunities to work with many different people from all over the nation. As the result, I have developed the trust and fellowship both from the Deaf communities and the general public surrounding them across America.

I have this urging passion to extend that asset and my warm heart beyond our borders and spread that into the Deaf communities around the globe. Furthermore, I would love to bridge Deaf communities across borders and help emerge an increased sense of global friendship and good-will that would last a lifetime.

By serving as a volunteer for the Peace Corps, it could give me a golden opportunity to “pay it forward”. The world could use people, hopefully like me, who can conduct themselves as good role models and instill into other Deaf peoples a sense of pride, self-esteem, self-worth and other attainable lifetime goals. Additionally, this endeavor, I believe, falls in line quite well with several of the Peace Corps’ expectations; namely (1) the commitment in improving the quality of life of the Deaf community I would live and work with, (2) development of local trust and confidence instilled among these people, and (3) enhances the spirit of cooperation, mutual learning and respect, both from within these communities and between them and America and other countries around the world.

A wandering young philosopher Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild) once quoted right before he perished in the Alaskan frontier: “Happiness is real only when it is shared”. I expand that further by believing that accomplishments and successes are real only when they are shared.